A Perfectly Normal Christmas
by AnnaRooma
Summary: It's Christmas for Jenna and her family, but will everything go as planned, or will the house burn up again, like it did last year? Is this really just a normal Christmas for the Smith's, or is there something else going on in the background?


I looked at our beautiful pine tree; we had bought it yesterday in a village fifteen minutes away, for a reasonable price too. We, my family and I, have just decorated the tree today, making it a real Christmas tree.

"Don't you think the tree looks beautiful this year?" I asked my husband Danny, while looking up at the star at the top of the pine tree.

"Yeah, we really put a lot of effort into decorating it this year" He said, also looking up at the Christmas tree.

"And Jasmine looked really proud to finally hang up her own Christmas bauble that she made in kindergarten" I smiled as I looked at the item hanging at one of the lower branches of the tree.

"Yes, I totally agree Jenna, but sometimes I wonder if Clara and John only help us decorating because they can snag a candy cane, or two" Danny said looking at me a little bit worried.

"Well, maybe they do take some candy while decorating the tree, but I believe that they actually _do_ enjoy doing it. It's one of those close family moments that you'll remember for a long time" I said looking back at Danny. "Don't you have any of those kinds of memories?"

"Well, yes I do, and well, I guess one of my favourite parts of Christmas was, and still is, decorating the Christmas tree" He told me with a small, beautiful smile. "Another of my favourite parts of Christmas is that you got Christmas presents. But if I'll be honest with you, that isn't one of my favourite parts anymore, do you know why?"

"I don't know… You don't get that great enthusiastic feeling anymore?" I answered him. _'I still like the presents part…_ '

"Well, that does add in a little bit, but that's not what I meant" He said shaking his head with a smile. "What I meant was, that I think that family is one of the best parts of Christmas. Not food, not Santa, not all the candy. Family. Like yours and mine family, all the kids, all our parents', all the cousins and all our siblings. That's what I think is the best thing about Christmas" He said all that with his brown eyes sparkling.

"Yes, you're right. Family is one of the best things with Christmas" I said smiling right back at him. "Hey, do you know what the kids are up to?"

"No, why are you asking?" He asked me, but he seemed to realise the reason while talking. "Err, maybe we should check on the kids before, you know, they burn down the house or something"

"Yeah, you're right. I take Clara, you take John?" I asked him with a questionable glance.

"And when we have found them we begin our search for the little Jassie" He said with a knowing smile.

"You still call her that Danny? I thought she didn't like being called 'Jassie'" I raised an eyebrow. He just laughed at my statement and grabbed my hand.

"Come on now, we have to find them if we want to spend Christmas in this house this year!" Danny seemed as excited as a kid.

"Of course!" I told him, smiling brightly. "We cannot let my sister be the host of the Christmas get-together, _again_." Danny rolled his eyes at that statement.

"Well, anyway, I bet you I will find John before you'll find Clara!" He challenged me.

"Oh, you're _so_ on!" I accepted his challenge by giving him a high-five.

"Oh, _cheese_ you make hard high-fives!" He shook his hand around in the air, as if to dull the pain. " _Ouch_ "

"Cheese?" I looked to him confused.

"Well, you don't like swearing ( _even though it isn't swearing_ ) so, I'll try not to. It'll be like a New Year's Resolution" He smiled knowingly at me.

"Will you keep it?" I looked back at him knowingly, and he looked anywhere else except for at me. "I thought so. Anyways, we really need to find the kids now. So, see ya!"

"Hey Jenna! Wait up!" I heard Danny shout behind me, but I had already run ahead by a few meters.

"Good luck with finding John!" I shouted behind my back. "I remember he's quite hard to find!"

Danny didn't reply to that, so I began my search for Clara in the most obvious place of all, her bedroom.

"Clara!" I said looking in to her room. "Are you in here, Clara?" She wasn't in the room, at least not where I could see her.

I went into her room and looked around. Three of the walls were painted a dark-ish kind of blue, while the fourth wall had a lighter shade of blue. Clara used to like dolls and making weird things out of toothpicks and clay, but she has mostly grown out of those things. I could see some doll's here and there over on some shelves, together with a trusty packet of toothpicks and a small packet of never-drying clay.

For her seventeenth birthday, she wanted a " _Build-it-yourself Airplane kit_ ", so I guess her interests have changed over the years. I saw the built airplane on top of her desk. I walked past her bed and up to her desk. I looked out of the window that was sat over Clara's desk.

"Are you outside?" I mumbled to myself. I looked at our snow-covered backyard, looking for anything that the kids could've done. What I saw first was a big snowman; one that I was sure wasn't there the day before. In my continued search for the kids, I looked to the left of the snowman there I saw something different; I saw three different sized, moving snowmen, and I knew I had found them.

"Gotcha"

I walked downstairs to the front door to put on all the warm and waterproof outerwear, before I went outside to try and catch my kids.

"Hey! Clara! John! Jasmine! Where are you?" I shouted into the distance, while walking towards the backyard.

HUMPH!

I looked at the place where I thought that the snow-attack came from.

"Hello?" I asked. Behind me, I heard the snow crunch. I turned around towards where the sound came from. "John? Is that you? Johnny?" I didn't see him, though. I felt something catch my legs.

"I gotcha, mummy!" A small girlish voice said. I looked down to see the three-year-old Jasmine smile an overly happy smile.

"Oh, there you are, Jasmine" I said. But then I had an idea. "Have you seen any of your siblings, Jasmine?" I saw her look behind her towards the bushes, but then she shook her head slowly.

"Are you sure about that, Jasmine?" She nodded, but then she shook her head.

"Yes, mummy. They a'e ove' the'e" Jasmine admitted pouting, but she was not quite able to pronounce the R's yet. "You'e not gonna be mad at me 'ight mummy?"

"Of course not, Jasmine" I reassured her. "Come on then, Jasmine! Let's go find your siblings!" Her mood changed instantly, she began jumping up and down excitedly.

"Yay! Follow me! Follow me!" She giggled.

"I'm coming, I'm coming" I said when she began tugging on my left hand. I let out a laugh. Jasmine dragged me behind the bushes toward a small pine tree, which a small tree house had been built, on the ground, around the tree.

"Whoa" I said astonished when I had taken it all in. "Are Clara and John in there?" She nodded quickly with a big smile on her face. "Let's go in then!"

We crawled in to the small hut and I was met with the sight of my two other kids.

"Mum!" They exclaimed at the same time, but then Clara continued. "We thought you'd never find us"

"That's why we threw some snow on you and sent lil' Jassie on you" John continued with a smile.

"Stop calling me that John!" Jasmine exclaimed, to which he just laughed at. "Mummy! Could you help me?"

"Jasmine, calm down" I told her, and then I turned to John. "And John, please stop calling Jasmine 'Jassie', she obviously doesn't like it"

"Alright, mum" He said at the same time as Jasmine said: "Al'ight, mummy"

"Good" I turned to face them all at the same time. "So, have any of you seen Danny?" All three nodded, but it was Clara who answered.

"Well, yes we saw him like 15 minutes ago, but he didn't find us then. That's why we came up with the idea that we used on you" The others nodded with her. I sighed.

"I'm won't ask even ask why you didn't tell him where you were when you saw him" I mumbled for myself. "Anyway, in what direction did he walk in?"

"I, I do believe he went towards the house" Clara answered again.

"Hey, what if I'd go get Danny, and then come out with some saffron buns, and some hot chocolate, wouldn't that be nice?" I told them, and as I expected, they liked the idea immediately. I began to make my way back inside the house.

I've been making saffron buns since I was a child, mostly because I grew up in Sweden together with my Swedish mum and Greek dad. So yes, I am half Greek, half Swedish, and I moved here to the UK when I was pregnant with Clara. Her dad told me that it would be better for us if we moved to the UK. Well, you might, or might not know this, but Danny isn't either Clara's _or_ John's dad. So, then I guess that you wonder, 'who are their dad's then?' Right? Well, let's start with Clara's dad. He's, well… He's a Greek god.

The Greek god Zeus.

In the beginning, I felt bad about that fact, because I've read the book series 'Percy Jackson' I was afraid that she'd die too early by the hands of a monster, but it turned out that in the universe that we lived in, the monsters died when they were killed in the old stories. So, there were no bad monsters hunting for my daughter. So, how did we get together? Well, that's an entirely different story.

Then there's John's dad, he's also a Greek god, the god Poseidon. Yes, I know, I know, 'how did you get together with two of the "Big three" gods?' Well, to be honest I've never known, and I probably never will. But I'm glad that I met them, that I got Clara, John and now Jasmine too! (Even though she isn't a demigod she's still great).

Being so lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice that I'd reached the kitchen already. I began looking for the saffron buns, it wasn't hard though, and they were in the freezer, together with all the other kinds of bread. I put 5 buns in the microwave to unfreeze and heat them up. While they were in the microwave, I decided to go look around for Danny.

But like in pretty much every movie, I didn't have to look for long. Because as soon as I stepped out of the kitchen, Danny came in through the front door.

"Jenna! There you are! Have you found- what is this fantastic smell?" He sighed dreamily. Then he shook his head abruptly. "No, wait, have you found the kids anywhere? I've searched pretty much everywhere, and I-"

"Danny calm down, I've found the kids" I interrupted him. "And I was just making some hot chocolate and heating up some saffron buns, that's what smells so good right now"

"It doesn't smell like you're making hot chocolate, though" Danny pointed out.

"Oh! I forgot all about that!" I rushed back in to the kitchen and took out all the ingredients. I had begun to boil the milk when I noticed that Danny had come in.

"How's it going, Jenna?" He asked me, walking up to stand beside me.

"It's going well" I answered. "How are you, Danny?"

"Well, the kids almost gave me a heart attack by disappearing like that, but I'm fine now that I know that they're alright" Danny answered me dramatically. I rolled my eyes at his antics. I continued to stand at the stove, and after about ten minutes the hot chocolate was done.

"Hey, Danny, think you could grab that thermos in the cabinet over the sink?" I looked over at Danny who was nibbling on a gingerbread cookie, looked back at me, put down the cookie and stood back up.

"Umm, yeah, of course" He went over to the sink and opened the cabinet above it. "Hey Jenna, where's the thermos?"

"It's on the top shelf" I answered him. "I think…" I mumbled the last part. Danny took a chair and dragged it over to the sink, so that he could see what was on the top shelf.

"Err, Jenna?" He looked confused.

"Yes Danny?" I rose an eyebrow in confusion. "What is it?"

"I can't find the thermos. Actually, the only thing up here is this" He held up a circular silver object. "I think it's some kind of silver pocket watch. In fact, this looks a lot like those pocket watches in Doctor Who, you know?" He jumped down from the chair and went over to me. "See?" He held it up to me.

I looked at it, but I didn't _want_ to see it for some reason. I tried to focus on the object, and I was almost able to focus completely on it. "Yeah, I think you're right, Danny. I'm just wondering how it got up there…?" I trailed off. Just then, a memory flashed by. I left too quickly for me to remember anything special, but I got the feeling that I shouldn't tell Danny about something.

"Did you get it at a Doctor Who convention, or something? I don't remember you getting it though…" He trailed off, lost in thought. He looked down at the watch. "Could we open it? I've always wanted to know what's inside of these"

"You can't open it, it's broken" I said. ' _It is broken, right?_ ' I had my doubts, but I said what my instincts told me to say.

"Have you tried to open it?" Danny asked me.

"Yeah, of course I have" I told him certainly, but then I began to doubt myself, again. "I mean, I _think_ I've tried to open it before" I had a nagging feeling that hadn't opened it before, but I got another feeling that I shouldn't tell Danny just yet.

I went over to the cupboard over the sink and went to stand on top of the chair. I looked at the top shelf inside of the cupboard, and at the back of it, against the wall, stood the thermos.

"You didn't see the thermos?" I asked him rhetorically, while I grabbed it with my right hand. "Anyway, here it is" I waved with the thermos. "Let me put hot chocolate in it, and we can head out"

I jumped down from the chair and went back to the stove, I noticed that Danny had walked out of the kitchen, I poured the hot chocolate in to the thermos. I took the still warm saffron buns and put them in a small bag.

"Are you done now, Jenna?" Danny asked. I nodded. "Good, but do you need any help with that?"

"No, I'm fine" I answered. "Let's go then!"

We went outside and I showed Danny to the bushes, which the tree house on the ground, was behind. He looked at it amazed and mumbled something about it being Clara who built it. We went inside.

"Hey, they a'e back!" Jasmine exclaimed as soon as we entered the little hut. "Do you have the hot chocolate?"

"Right here" I waved with the thermos. "And I've also got the saffron buns!" Clara and John smiled at us and went to sit on a fleece blanket which was on the ground against the tree.

"Could I get mine? Could I get it? Could I? Could I?" John said, jumping in his seat. "Please, please, please!"

"Of course, here you go" I picked up one of the saffron buns from the bag and gave it to him. I saw in the corner of my eye that Clara rolled her eyes at his childish antics. I saw Jasmine looking up at me with her adorable face. I took up another one. "Here you go Jasmine" Her whole face lit up with happiness as I saw her walk over to John and she sat on his lap.

I fished up a third one, which I gave to Clara, to which she smiled appreciatively. I then took the last two ones and gave one of them to Danny, while I kept the last one for myself. Danny and I sat down together with the kids on the blanket. We pulled another blanket over us and just sat there against the tree, keeping each other warm.

"Who wants some hot chocolate?" I asked them.


End file.
